


Throw Your Fists Up

by DiscoCritic



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: Anger, Fist Fighting, Gen, Nosebleeds, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Punching, Stress, huh, is he allowed to do that, jet's always the peacemaker, or is that not legal, poor guy, poor newsie, they can't help her when they're trying to kill each other, what if he wants to punch someone every once in a while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-12 08:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19128601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscoCritic/pseuds/DiscoCritic
Summary: newsie's been captured and the fab four have to decrypt a code to rescue her. unfortunately, party sucks at stuff with numbers and the noise of ghoul's pencil is fucking annoying.needless to say, they need better ways of coping with stress.





	Throw Your Fists Up

**Author's Note:**

> so i know the lyric actually means something like "hell yeah! rebellion!" but i threw it in a different direction because i really wanted to write a fist fighting scene.
> 
> enjoy regardless!

"Fuck. Shit. What was I adding? What am I _doing? Fuck_!" Party bangs his fist on the table.

"The code is a mixture of numbers and letters," Kobra says again. "Some of the numbers match up to letters, some of the letters are other letters, and some of the numbers are other numbers. And some of them are the same. And… some of them we don't use at all." He's much too patient for this. But he's used to this; deciphering codes and encoding software was his job in the city.

It's a complex kind of math thing that he's already tried explaining five times.

Party Poison fucking _hates_ math. Algebra, geometry, whatever the hell this is. He hates it. The numbers get mixed up in his head; they swirl around like ballroom dancers, not helping the fact that he can't even remember the formula to begin with.

Ghoul, next to him, isn't improving the situation either. He keeps scratching lines through his papers, sticking his tongue out to concentrate, writing something down, and then scratching _that_ out. Then he repeats the cycle.

Party's watching him, anger building up inside his throat before he finally explodes.

Why the fuck is his pencil so _loud?_

"Stop fuckin' _doin'_  that!"

The girl jumps at the table one over, startled by the sudden exclamation, and accidentally knocks over a salt shaker. She glances up and her hand drifts to her robot toy.

Party swipes the papers—the maps and coded data that none of them have been able to translate even though they've been sitting here for three goddamn fucking  _hours_ already in the hot as hell diner with no air conditioning—off the table and onto the floor. They float down infuriatingly slow, mocking his anger and only provoking him more. It's fucking stupid. They're fucking stupid. Everybody here is fucking stupid.

"Why the _fuck_  are you so loud?" he growls at Ghoul, capping his own pen angrily and throwing it against the wall. "I'm trying to fuckin'  _concentrate_ but all I can hear is your stupid pencilscratching across your paper! Why are you so _loud?"_

"Shut it," Ghoul spits back, fire on his tongue as poisonous as his crewmate's name. "The numbers didn't match up and there's no eraser. It's not my fault there's twenty different outcomes to this. You're just pissed you can't figure out your own shit. I'm doin' what I gotta do; you should focus on your own crap. Or maybe you're too fuckin' dumb to get it at all an' you're just tryin' to distract us from it!"

The redhead stands up, nudging the table away with his knee and almost kicking Kobra as he pushes his chair in with an unnecessary air of violence. "Say that again, motherfucker, and you're gonna regret it."

Jet Star gets up too now, making a grab for Party's arm before he can do anything reckless. The latter shakes him off and glares at Ghoul. Kobra's doing the same holding him back, and standing around the table, they probably look like they're about to perform a weird cult sacrifice or something.

"You got one chance to shut your mouth before somethin' comes out and makes you sound even stupider than you already do, ya _idiot_ ," Ghoul snarls.

That's it, that sends him off the edge. Party lunges forward, slipping out of Jet's grasp, and the two of them are throwing punches before anyone can blink. They're wrestling—not play wrestling like usual, actually trying to hurt each other—slamming the other's body into tables and chairs that get in the way of their wrath.

"Hey! No!" Kobra dashes forward to separate them. But Party's arm flies out as he advances on Ghoul and he catches his brother straight in the chest without even looking, knocking him back into one of the other booths and sending him down for the count.

"No, no, stop it! You're scaring me!" The girl shrieks and drops to her knees and crawls to Kobra, staring at him, terrified, with those big brown eyes of hers. He's making the strangled groaning noises of someone suddenly winded, trying to suck in all the air he can get.

"You're scaring me, you're scaring me, Party!" she cries. She covers her ears and starts crying as they shout obscenities back and forth at each other, some of it muffled as arms and legs tangle and they end up on the floor, Ghoul straddling Party until he throws him off.

Ghoul's fist flies into Party's view and he hears a sickening crunch as his head slams down. His eyes water but he frees one of his hands from Ghoul's pinning grip.

"I'm fuckin' sick of you always harping on me!" Ghoul yells as Party's fingers wrap around his throat. He bucks his hips, brings his knee up, and clocks him in the stomach. The redhead doubles over but recovers quick enough to jerk them both to their feet.

Jet looks wildly at Kobra, trying to make sure he's breathing now, but the girl's hysterical. She's trying to talk but can't stop sobbing enough to get a full sentence out.

"St-stop them, Jet, don't let"—gasp—"don't let them"—gasp—"don't let them hurt each other!"

"'M not harping on shit." Party's not even listening to her, hyper-focused on the other Killjoy with rage in his eyes. Blood's flowing from his nose, staining his t-shirt and dripping onto the dirty white tiles. "It's just 'cause everything you do's annoyin' and _useless!_ " He throws his whole weight into the next strike, his hand a ball of fury that'll leave a bruise that shape for a week.

Jet Star's closest to Ghoul, and he grabs his elbows and pulls him away as he staggers back with the force of Party's pummeling. "I'm gonna fucking  _kill_ him," Ghoul roars. "I'm gonna kill him!"

"Stop it, control yourself!"

Jet gets ignored as Fun Ghoul kicks him in the shin and picks up a chair and rushes toward Party, who's snarling from the corner.

"I don't give a shit, I'm gonna kill him!"

"I wanna see you _try,_ bastard." Party curls his lip in disgust and reaches for the gun in his thigh holster, but his fingers are slow to undo all the straps holding it in and he's not able to get it out before Ghoul's rushing at him like a bull honing in on the red of his hair.

"What the hell are you thinking, Ghoul _, what the hell?!_ " Jet Star lunges forward and grabs Ghoul's wrist right before he gets to Party with his weapon of choice. "You can't smash him with a _chair_ , _what the hell, Ghoul?!_ "

Ghoul stumbles to a stop, doesn't say anything, and lets go of the chair.

It falls to the ground with a metal clang that resonates around the whole diner, the only noise in an otherwise roomful of silence.

Jet's still holding his wrist but tentatively lets go now, keeping a close eye on him.

No one moves except Kobra, who's still lying on his back trying to catch his breath. He's gotten the wind knocked out of him before, but this time he hit his head against the floor when he fell and he can't sit up without getting dizzy.

Party combined with Ghoul… the two of them amp each other up until they're foaming at the mouth.

And people who get in the way get injured.

Ghoul's still frozen in the middle of the room when Jet clears his throat. "C'mon, Party," he says, leaving the shorter Killjoy. "We're going outside."

He guides the redhead, whose bloody nose has left a trail of red down his shirt, out the door. After one last glance at Ghoul, who looks utterly horrified, he lets the door close behind him and steps out to the curb.

Jet points and Party sits like he's back in Bat City kindergarten waiting for his instructor's directions.

"Wanna say what the point of that was?" Jet's arms are crossed and his expression is grave.

Party wipes his nose with the hem of his shirt, smearing blood across it, and starts to answer, "Uh…"

Jet's waiting.

"I just got mad at him. I guess. I don't know. This is so fucking stressful. I'm sorry." He puts his head in his hands and breathes.

Jet waits a moment before speaking. "Besides your and Ghoul's obvious damage to each other, you scared the girl half to death and almost knocked out your own brother. Then you guys pretty much ransacked the entire diner. It's like you _haven't_ heard me say "actions have consequences" every single time something dumb like this happens."

Party opens his mouth, but Jet's not done. "You and Ghoul, oh, my god, you two are so reckless. You gotta be _careful,_ man, before you end up hurting more people. Worse than how you already beat each other up."

 _Isn't the aftermath supposed to be secondary?_ Party wants to quip. But prior experience tells him not to; not when Jet's already mad. So he just keeps his mouth shut and takes it.

"Is Kobra okay?" he says instead.

Jet gives an exasperated little shrug. "The girl helped him into a booth. But _damn_ , what made you so mad?"

Party rakes his fingers through his hair and sighs. It's complicated.

"I just, like, just... can't… man, it's frustrating. It's really fucking frustrating that Newsie's life is dependin' on this and I can't even do the damn math to help. Like, and Ghoul wouldn't stop... scratching his shit out and it was just annoying. The noise, and that he had numbers at all and then immediately got rid of them."

"How do you think I felt? I can barely even read, Party. At least you were moderately helpful."

"I know. I know."

"We can't rescue NewsAGoGo until we've cracked the code. And we can't do that when the crew's falling apart from the inside."

"Yeah."

"You need to go inside, apologize, and clean yourself up."

"I know."

"Get your act together, Poison." Jet claps a hand on Party's shoulder, gives it a little squeeze then and stands up. "Go ahead. You sort yourself out. I'm gonna check the water barrels; it's supposed be acid rain later and I want to seal the tops before it starts."

Party nods and trudges back inside, head hanging. He knows he needs to apologize, but admitting he's wrong nearly kills him. He hates it.

When he walks in, Ghoul's sitting in a chair with his head in his hands. Kobra and the girl are whispering in the corner farthest away from him, their heads bent together while they draw on the backs of crumpled newspapers.

Kobra doesn't acknowledge him at all. He's still a little angry, still a little scared.

Party is terrifying sometimes, especially when you're in the direct line of his anger. Kobra's learned to watch for the signs, but he was just trying to make sure no one got hurt.

He ended up making it worse for himself by jumping in.

He shakes his head slightly, which is dumb because it sends a sharp pain through his temples, and tries to focus on what the girl's showing him. _Ignore 'im_ , he tells himself. _Party just got too heated. I shoulda watched where I was anyway._

Ghoul, on the other hand, doesn't even lift his head. He feels utterly sick. Doesn't know why he snapped.

He didn't mean what he said; the words were just missiles in a moment of anger. He didn't mean it.

He didn't mean it, and he knows it, but as Party sits down at his own table a few feet away, he just wants to disappear.

Oh, god, he said he wanted to _kill_ him.

Guilt bounces around in the pit of his stomach and he just wants to disappear.

Two tables over, Party feels the same way.

_I almost pulled a gun on my best friend._

He chews on the inside of his lip as the fight replays in his brain.

_I tried to pull a gun on him._

_Then I hurt my brother._

_And I scared the girl._

It's his fault.

"Ghoul," he says.

Ghoul doesn't move for a minute. Is he not going to acknowledge him?

 _Serves you right_ , says the voice inside his head.

"Ghoulie," he says.

Ghoul wants to sink into the floor and disappear. Slip into the void, never to be seen again.

"Yeah?" Ghoul says. His voice comes out an octave lower than usual.

"I'm sorry for yellin' at you."

He glances up. Party looks at him.

"Me too," Ghoul says. Then he pulls out a napkin from his back pocket and hands it to the redhead. "Sorry for beating you up."

Party wipes the blood from his face and then twists it so it can fit in his nostril. He sticks it in the left one to stop the bleeding.

"Thanks," he says thickly. From his clogged nose, the word comes out sounding not unlike a foghorn, and Ghoul can't but giggle.

"Kobra?" Party says.

He looks over.

"Sorry for accidentally backhanding you."

"It's okay," he says. "Was my fault for jumpin' in anyway."

And just like that, they've made up.

The Fabulous Four have a funny relationship. They may beat each other up a lot, and maybe they'll try to shoot each other once in a while, but _hey!_ at least they're mostly still on speaking terms at the end of it.

**Author's Note:**

> "throw your fists up, throw your fists up now" - party poison by my chemical romance
> 
> song requested by an anonymous user on tumblr.  
> follow me on tumblr @discocritic and send prompts!


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